Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Instead of Prez Bystander or Prez Pick-and-Choose, George Will thinks ‘President Never Mind’ is an apt description.
… Although the Constitution has no Article VIII, the administration acts as though there is one that reads: “Notwithstanding all that stuff in other articles about how laws are made, if a president finds a law politically inconvenient, he can simply post on the White House Web site a notice saying: Never mind.”
Never mind that the law stipulates 2014 as the year when employers with 50 full-time workers are mandated to offer them health-care coverage or pay fines. Instead, 2015 will be the year. Unless Democrats see a presidential election coming.
This lesson in the Obama administration’s approach to the rule of law is pertinent to the immigration bill, which at last count had 222 instances of a discretionary “may” and 153 of “waive.” Such language means that were the Senate bill to become law, the executive branch would be able to do pretty much as it pleases, even to the point of saying about almost anything: Never mind.
Thomas Sowell completed a four part series on the mindset of the left. Part one deals with their refusal to acknowledge the existence of evil.
… At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid facing the plain fact of evil — that some people simply choose to do things that they know to be wrong when they do them. Every kind of excuse, from poverty to an unhappy childhood, is used by the left to explain and excuse evil.
All the people who have come out of poverty or unhappy childhoods, or both, and become decent and productive human beings, are ignored. So are the evils committed by people raised in wealth and privilege, including kings, conquerors and slaveowners.
Why has evil been such a hard concept for many on the left to accept? The basic agenda of the left is to change external conditions. But what if the problem is internal? What if the real problem is the cussedness of human beings?
Rousseau denied this in the 18th century and the left has been denying it ever since. Why? Self preservation.
If the things that the left wants to control — institutions and government policy — are not the most important factors in the world’s problems, then what role is there for the left? …
Part Two of Thomas Sowell’s series covers the left’s policies that keep people in poverty.
… “Poverty” once had some concrete meaning — not enough food to eat or not enough clothing or shelter to protect you from the elements, for example. Today it means whatever the government bureaucrats, who set up the statistical criteria, choose to make it mean. And they have every incentive to define poverty in a way that includes enough people to justify welfare state spending.
Most Americans with incomes below the official poverty level have air-conditioning, television, own a motor vehicle and, far from being hungry, are more likely than other Americans to be overweight. But an arbitrary definition of words and numbers gives them access to the taxpayers’ money.
This kind of “poverty” can easily become a way of life, not only for today’s “poor,” but for their children and grandchildren.
Even when they have the potential to become productive members of society, the loss of welfare state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit “tax” on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on a millionaire.
If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose $15,000 in government benefits, would you do it?
In short, the political left’s welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. …
Part Three traces the origins of left foolishness to 18th century France.
… Some of the most sweeping and spectacular rhetoric of the left occurred in 18th century France, where the very concept of the left originated in the fact that people with certain views sat on the left side of the National Assembly.
The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine.
In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao.
Milder versions of socialism, with central planning of national economies, took root in India and in various European democracies.
If the preconceptions of the left were correct, central planning by educated elites with vast amounts of statistical data at their fingertips, expertise readily available, and backed by the power of government, should have been more successful than market economies where millions of individuals pursued their own individual interests willy-nilly. …
Dr. Sowell closes with his own experiences.
At the heart of the left’s vision of the world is the implicit assumption that high-minded third parties like themselves can make better decisions for other people than those people can make for themselves.
That arbitrary and unsubstantiated assumption underlies a wide spectrum of laws and policies over the years, ranging from urban renewal to ObamaCare.
One of the many international crusades by busybodies on the left is the drive to limit the hours of work by people in other countries — especially poorer countries — in businesses operated by multinational corporations. One international monitoring group has taken on the task of making sure that people in China do not work more than the legally prescribed 49 hours per week.
Why international monitoring groups, led by affluent Americans or Europeans, would imagine that they know what is best for people who are far poorer than they are, and with far fewer options, is one of the many mysteries of the busybody elite.
As someone who left home at the age of 17, with no high school diploma, no job experience and no skills, I spent several years learning the hard way what poverty is like. One of the happier times during those years was a brief period when I worked 60 hours a week — 40 hours delivering telegrams during the day and 20 hours working part-time in a machine shop at night. …
The Economist explains why diesel engines are becoming more popular.
NOT to belittle the success Tesla Motors has had with its Model S luxury electric car—outselling its petrol-powered equivalents since being launched last year—the prospects for battery-powered vehicles generally may never shine quite as bright again. Babbage believes their day in the sun is about to be eclipsed by, wait for it, the diesel engine.
Surely not that dirty, noisy, smelly, lumbering lump of a motor that was difficult to start in the winter? Certainly not. A whole new generation of sprightly diesels—developed over the past few years—bear no resemblance to your father’s clattering, oil-burner of an Oldsmobile. It is no exaggeration to say that, with its reputation for unreliability and anaemic performance, the Olds 4.3-litre diesel from the late 1970s single-handedly destroyed the reputation of diesel engines in America for decades to come. Quite possibly, it also contributed to Oldsmobile’s own demise.
Later this year, Americans will get their first chance to experience what a really advanced diesel is like—and why Europeans opt for diesels over hybrids, plug-in electrics and even petrol-powered cars. The leader of the new pack is the Mazda 6, completely redesigned for 2014, with the choice of either a 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine or a 2.2-litre turbo-charged diesel. The diesel has 30% better fuel economy and provides oodles more pulling power. Good as the petrol version is, motorists who choose it over the diesel will miss out on a lot.
Mazda is not the only motor manufacturer with an advanced diesel in the works. Among others, Mitsubishi Motors has been selling cars with a new generation of 1.8-litre and 2.2-litre diesel engines in Europe since 2010. Hedging its bets on hybrids, Toyota has also been testing several radically new diesel designs.
What marks this latest generation of diesel engines from even their “common-rail” predecessors of the late 1990s, let alone their belching ancestors from the 1970s, is the use of a surprisingly low compression ratio of around 14-to-1 rather than the more usual 16-to-1 or higher. The reduction in cylinder pressure may sound marginal, but it gives rise to a virtuous cycle of beneficial effects unavailable before. …